Most likely not, no.

Ever since I completed my degree, I have often been asked the same question: Would I have seen or read any of your work?

In response, my face has often resembled this:

Image one: Me as an emoji.

I have never quite lost the awkwardness when that question is asked; it’s hard explain how the industry moves and dances between the what is published or produced and what is not. Meaning that, although you may have been a writer for many years, sometimes you don’t necessarily have the books, or the scripts, to show for it. In reality, you may be an emerging writer for a very, very long time. I mean, you could be twenty years into the business, have written countless scripts (some produced) and you’d still be emerging. You could be eighty-four, with arthritis and a few missing teeth, be on your third crime fiction novel, have two houses, three very hissy cats, have a couple of dusty film awards and still be emerging. In fact, you could be dead for about a decade and there’d be a publisher or producer still out there rooting for you.

For a long time, I actually believed that I shouldn’t refer to myself as a writer until I had something concrete out there in the world. Basically, I felt like I hadn’t quite earned the title. However, if I decided to wait for that magical publication or commission to happen, there were two potential, near definite, outcomes:

Potential outcome number one: a photo of me still waiting for my first commission.

Potential outcome number two: I would have stopped writing.

Let me repeat that: I would have stopped writing.

So I am going to suggest something drastic: let your ego shine. We all have egos and, despite what you may think, it’s absolutely okay to let them sparkle every once in a while. Humbleness is a quality when used in the right circumstances, but when it actually turns to a lack of self-belief, well, how is that going to help you grow?

Passions can be late bloomers, but that doesn’t make us any less dazzling. So my advice to you all is to be proud of every non-commissioned, non-published word. In my case, I am a writer of ten (plus) years who got her very first commission last week. But you know those words that may never see the light of day? Well they also count, and I am going to stick by them.